


Unfinished Business: Beneath the Surface

by aadarshinah



Series: Unfinished Business [7]
Category: Stargate - All Series, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode: s04e10 Beneath the Surface, F/M, Fraternization, Relationship Discussions, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-12
Updated: 2015-03-12
Packaged: 2018-03-17 14:28:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3532790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aadarshinah/pseuds/aadarshinah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missing Moment's from SG1's "Beneath the Surface"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unfinished Business: Beneath the Surface

**Author's Note:**

> A series of not so canon-compliant missing moment's from Stargate: SG-1's fourth thru seventh seasons, with varying degrees of Sam/Jack. Part of the [**Locality**](http://aadarshinah.livejournal.com/320058.html) universe - but, as always, knowledge of that is not necessary for knowledge of this.
> 
> This one proved distressingly difficult to write. This may be the last one I get up before the "anniversary" for this series - the first Sights Unseen having been published on March 29 of last year. But hopefully not. 
> 
> _After the episode..._

**3 October, 2000 – Colorado Springs, Earth, Milky Way**

 

As soon as she’s allowed to go back to her own apartment following the events on P3R-118, Sam sleeps for fifteen hours straight, waking just before eleven the next morning. She suspects she’d have slept for the rest of the day if not for the gnawing pain in her stomach reminding her that (one) she’s had nothing but thin gruel and bread cut with something that might have been bone meal for the better part of a month and (two) the only food in her kitchen that’s still salvageable are a couple of packets of sugar-free Jell-O and some cans of chicken noodle that Daniel brought over last time she was sick.

Ignoring both, she goes to Waffle House instead.

After eating enough that the waitress starts to give her worried looks whenever she comes by to refill her coffee, Sam goes out into the parking lot and puts on her motorcycle helmet with the intention of heading home and seeing just how long she can draw out her impending food coma. But then she glances up and realizes just how _blue_ the sky is and _warm_ the afternoon has become and _bright_ the leaves are turning and next thing she knows she’s following the highway out of town.

She takes her Indian up and down the mountain roads, along narrow, twisting highways that she’d never expected of existing, through tired, sleepy resort towns just starting to gear up for the ski season. The wind is has just enough of a bite to be uncomfortable and she’s in no way dressed for a long ride, but the leaves are a smear of crimson and blood orange as she sails past and above her is only sky and it is nothing, _nothing_ like the overheated, overcrowded underground bunkers she still feels like she spent her life in that Sam continues riding long after she should have turned back.

But turn back she does eventually, arriving back at her apartment just as the streetlights are coming on. To her surprise, Colonel O’Neill is there, leaning against his truck.

He doesn’t bother with formalities. He dives right in, saying, “We need to talk.”

Sam takes off her helmet. “How long have you been waiting?”

“A while.” He shrugs. “We really need to talk.”

“I know.”

It’s a clumsy, awkward silence that follows them up the stairs and into her apartment, lingering as they stare at each other from opposite sides of the room – Sam on the couch that faces the side window; the Colonel standing gracelessly on the other side of the coffee table, hands in his jacket pockets, as if reluctant to draw this out any longer but unsure of where to start.

So Sam starts for him.

“We need to figure this out.” Once is an accident. Twice is a mistake. Three times – even if they were lacking their real memories – is just stupidity.

“We have to end it,” the Colonel says hollowly – at least, it sounds hollow to her. But Sam could be imagining a lot of things. She could be imagining that there are real emotions at play here. She could be imagining that there could be a decent ending to all of this. She could be imagining that this hurts him as much as it hurts her. “I’m your superior officer. Even if you switched teams, we’d still be in the same chain of command, and I couldn’t ask that of you even if it would. There’s just no way this can work.”

“We just have to be more careful – not,” she adds quickly, “to continue this, whatever this is, but so that it doesn’t happen again. Spend more time apart. Try to,” she waves vaguely, as if that offers some sort of answer, “move past this.”

“Good. I mean… You know what I mean.”

Sam does. She just hopes they can move past this, especially now that they’ve gotten a glimpse of what it could be like if they didn’t have their jobs and ranks between them. But there’s always a chance.


End file.
